In the UK, on 20 October, a major Google Cloud outage disrupted banking apps, online payments, delivery services and certain government platforms. The cause was a power failure at the company’s London infrastructure. Later that afternoon, Google announced that most services had been restored, whilst the company and the financial regulator, the FCA, are assessing the impact of the incident.
Briefly about the main points
- The Google Cloud outage in the UK was caused by a power cut in London.
- Bank customers experienced difficulties with payments, money transfers, apps and ATMs.
- The issues affected postal, courier, medical and judicial digital platforms.
- The incident lasted almost eight hours and affected 38 Google Cloud products.
- Google has closed the case, whilst the FCA is assessing its financial and operational implications.
Payments, banking apps and deliveries were experiencing disruptions
The problems were most acute for customers of financial institutions. Users reported being unable to log into mobile apps, make card payments, transfer money or withdraw cash. Sky News readers also reported payments being declined at petrol stations, in shops and when paying road tolls.
Revolut has confirmed disruptions to several services, including card payments and cash withdrawals from ATMs. The bank stated that customers’ funds and personal data remain secure, and no financial losses resulting from the technical incident itself have been confirmed. Disruptions were also reported by Lloyds Bank, Halifax, HSBC and the Bank of Scotland; the nature and duration of these varied depending on the institution.
The disruptions extended beyond the financial sector. They affected Royal Mail, DPD, the Rightmove property platform, certain digital services run by NHS England, court video platforms and the personal finance management app Emma.
The incident in the London area lasted nearly eight hours
Google. confirmed that the cause was a power supply incident in the europe-west2-b zone, which forms part of the company’s London cloud infrastructure region. The disruption began at approximately 07:08 British time: some systems became unavailable, whilst others returned network errors.
According to Google Cloud, the incident lasted 7 hours and 52 minutes and affected 38 cloud products, including Google Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery, Cloud SQL and Google Kubernetes Engine. Once the issue had been resolved power supply issues The company closed the incident on its status page, noting that some customers might still need to seek assistance due to lingering effects.
Lloyds announced that its mobile app was back up and running, whilst DPD reported that access to its website had been restored. Royal Mail stated that the direct delivery of letters and parcels had not been affected. Systems for broadcasting court hearings have also resumed operations.
The FCA is assessing the impact of the disruption on the financial sector
In July, the UK introduced direct regulatory oversight of Google Cloud, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Oracle as critical technology providers to the financial sector. This supervisory regime is in place due to the reliance of banks and other institutions on major cloud platforms.
The FCA told Reuters that it is in contact with Google and the affected companies to assess the impact of the incident. Google will conduct an internal investigation and is due to publish a detailed technical analysis. The full extent of the financial and operational consequences has not yet been determined.
